Yes. This is late. And short. But, you know A lot of reviews this time and there were a lot of good ones. Choices were tough to make. This is good. Shows the site's doing well and all that. I take full credit.

YOU NARROWLY WIN THIRD PLACE!!! You do a great job of levying judgement against this game simply by taking a vignette of one particular playthrough and using it to describe the flaws in this difficult-to-the-point-of-unfair game. A Godzilla game where you get to control the completely outmatched human army. Yeah, nothing could go wrong with that idea Fun review.

I really like the angle you took with this one, concerning the simple-but-long Doom games to today's extravagant-but-short Modern Warfare sorts. And then bringing up how this one is short even by those standards. Very effective how you bring up that all the big "grab you" moments are diluted because of how quickly they come after each other.

I liked this best of the 47 reviews for this game (note: slight exaggeration; there were 3). I'm currently finishing up XIII-1, so I really got the gist of what you're saying. You did a really good job of mentioning just about everything about the game and how things were screwed up. Particularly in mentioning that XIII-1/2 weren't failures of design, but failures to connect. The whole review is just loaded with those connection failures, from the horrid storytelling to most of the game being really easy with the part that isn't being unfairly cheap. Sad thing: in a year or two, when it's a lot cheaper, I'll probably buy it because the FF name is attached and I have a bizarre compulsion to play all non-online FF games. Paradoxes, you know?
And now, it's time to work on my FF XIII-1 review. Or take a nap at work in my cubicle.